Chapter 10

"And they went from house to house, taking what they wanted and setting all alight. One old man--he had lived in his house since he was a babe suckled by his mother--saw a soldier lighting up his house. He fell on his knees and caught the foot of the soldier. 'Excuse me, excuse me,' he said, with many tears. 'Please do not burn my house. Leave it for me that I may die there. I am an old man, and near my end.'

"The soldier tried to shake him off, but the old man prayed the more. 'Excuse me, excuse me,' he moaned. Then the soldier lifted his gun and shot the old man, and we buried him.

"One who was near to her hour of child-birth was lying in a house. Alas for her! One of our young men was working in the field cutting grass. He was working and had not noticed the soldiers come. He lifted his knife, sharpening it in the sun. 'There is a Eui-pyung,' he said, and he fired and killed him. One man, seeing the fire, noticed that all his family records were burning. He rushed in to try and pull them out, but as he rushed a soldier fired, and he fell."

A man, whose appearance proclaimed him to be of a higher class than most of the villagers, then spoke in bitter tones. "We are rebuilding our houses," he said, "but of what use is it for us to do so? I was a man of family. My fathers and fathers' fathers had their record. Our family papers are destroyed. Henceforth we are a people without a name, disgraced and outcast."

I found, when I went further into the country, that this view was fairly common. The Koreans regard their family existence with peculiar veneration. The family record means everything to them. When it is destroyed, the family is wiped out It no longer exists, even though there are many members of it still living. As the province of Chung-Chong-Do prides itself on the large number of its substantial families, there could be no more effective way of striking at them than this.

I rode out of the village heavy-hearted. What struck me most about this form of punishment, however, was not the suffering of the villagers so much as the futility of the proceedings, from the Japanese point of view. In place of pacifying a people, they were turning hundreds of quiet families into rebels. During the next few days I was to see at least one town and many scores of villages treated as this one. To what end? The villagers were certainly not the people fighting the Japanese. All they wanted to do was to look quietly after their own affairs. Japan professed a desire to conciliate Korea and to win the affection and support of her people. In one province at least the policy of house-burning had reduced a prosperous community to ruin, increased the rebel forces, and sown a crop of bitter hatred which it would take generations to root out.

We rode on through village after village and hamlet after hamlet burned to the ground. The very attitude of the people told me that the hand of Japan had struck hard there. We would come upon a boy carrying a load of wood. He would run quickly to the side of the road when he saw us, expecting he knew not what. We passed a village with a few houses left. The women flew to shelter as I drew near. Some of the stories that I heard later helped me to understand why they should run. Of course they took me for a Japanese.

All along the route I heard tales of the Japanese plundering, where they had not destroyed. At places the village elders would bring me an old man badly beaten by a Japanese soldier because he resisted being robbed. Then came darker stories. In Seoul I had laughed at them. Now, face to face with the victims, I could laugh no more.

That afternoon we rode into Ichon itself. This is quite a large town. I found it practically deserted. Most of the people had fled to the hills, to escape from the Japanese. I slept that night in a schoolhouse, now deserted and unused. There were the cartoons and animal pictures and pious mottoes around, but the children were far away. I passed through the market-place, usually a very busy spot. There was no sign of life there.

I turned to some of the Koreans.

"Where are your women? Where are your children?" I demanded. They pointed to the high and barren hills looming against the distant heavens.

"They are up there," they said. "Better for them to lie on the barren hillsides than to be outraged here."

IX

WITH THE REBELS

Day after day we travelled through a succession of burned-out villages, deserted towns, and forsaken country. The fields were covered with a rich and abundant harvest, ready to be gathered, and impossible for the invaders to destroy. But most of the farmers were hiding on the mountainsides, fearing to come down. The few courageous men who had ventured to come back were busy erecting temporary shelters for themselves before the winter cold came on, and had to let the harvest wait. Great flocks of birds hung over the crops, feasting undisturbed.

Up to Chong-ju nearly one-half of the villages on the direct line of route had been destroyed by the Japanese. At Chong-ju I struck directly across the mountains to Chee-chong, a day's journey. Four-fifths of the villages and hamlets on the main road between these two places were burned to the ground.

The few people who had returned to the ruins always disclaimed any connection with the "Righteous Army." They had taken no part in the fighting, they said. The volunteers had come down from the hills and had attacked the Japanese; the Japanese had then retaliated by punishing the local residents. The fact that the villagers had no arms, and were peaceably working at home-building, seemed at the time to show the truth of their words. Afterwards when I came up with the Korean fighters I found these statements confirmed. The rebels were mostly townsmen from Seoul, and not villagers from that district.

Between 10,000 and 20,000 people had been driven to the hills in this small district alone, either by the destruction of their homes or because of fear excited by the acts of the soldiers.

Soon after leaving Ichon I came on a village where the Red Cross was flying over one of the houses. The place was a native Anglican church. I was later on to see the Red Cross over many houses, for the people had the idea that by thus appealing to the Christians' God they made a claim on the pity and charity of the Christian nations.

In the evening, after I had settled down in the yard of the native inn, the elders of the Church came to see me, two quiet-spoken, grave, middle-aged men. They were somewhat downcast, and said that their village had suffered considerably, the parties of soldiers passing through having taken what they wanted and being guilty of some outrages. A gardener's wife had been violated by a Japanese soldier, another soldier standing guard over the house with rifle and fixed bayonet. A boy, attracted by the woman's screams, ran and fetched the husband. He came up, knife in hand. "But what could he do?" the elders asked. "There was the soldier, with rifle and bayonet, before the door."

Later on I was to hear other stories, very similar to this. These tales were confirmed on the spot, so far as confirmation was possible. In my judgment such outrages were not numerous, and were limited to exceptional parties of troops. But they produced an effect altogether disproportionate to their numbers. The Korean has high ideals about the sanctity of his women, and the fear caused by a comparatively few offences was largely responsible for the flight of multitudes to the hills.

In the burning of villages, a certain number of Korean women and children were undoubtedly killed. The Japanese troops seem in many cases to have rushed a village and to have indulged in miscellaneous wild shooting, on the chance of there being rebels around, before firing the houses. In one hamlet, where I found two houses still standing, the folk told me that these had been left because the Japanese shot the daughter of the owner of one of them, a girl of ten. "When they shot her," the villagers said, "we approached the soldiers, and said, 'Please excuse us, but since you have killed the daughter of this man you should not burn his house.' And the soldiers listened to us."

In towns like Chong-ju and Won-ju practically all the women and children and better-class families had disappeared. The shops were shut and barricaded by their owners before leaving, but many of them had been forced open and looted. The destruction in other towns paled to nothing, however, before the havoc wrought in Chee-chong. Here was a town completely destroyed.

Chee-chong was, up to the late summer of 1907, an important rural centre, containing between 2,000 and 3,000 inhabitants, and beautifully situated in a sheltered plain, surrounded by high mountains. It was a favourite resort of high officials, a Korean Bath or Cheltenham. Many of the houses were large, and some had tiled roofs--a sure evidence of wealth.

When the "Righteous Army" began operations, one portion of it occupied the hills beyond Chee-chong. The Japanese sent a small body of troops into the town. These were attacked one night on three sides, several were killed, and the others were compelled to retire. The Japanese despatched reinforcements, and after some fighting regained lost ground. They then determined to make Chee-chong an example to the countryside. The entire town was put to the torch. The soldiers carefully tended the flames, piling up everything for destruction. Nothing was left, save one image of Buddha and the magistrate's yamen. When the Koreans fled, five men, one woman, and a child, all wounded, were left behind. These disappeared in the flames.

It was a hot early autumn when I reached Chee-chong. The brilliant sunshine revealed a Japanese flag waving-over a hillock commanding the town, and glistened against the bayonet of a Japanese sentry. I dismounted and walked down the streets and over the heaps of ashes. Never have I witnessed such complete destruction. Where a month before there had been a busy and prosperous community, there was now nothing but lines of little heaps of black and gray dust and cinders. Not a whole wall, not a beam, and not an unbroken jar remained. Here and there a man might be seen poking among the ashes, seeking for aught of value. The search was vain. Chee-chong had been wiped off the map. "Where are your people?" I asked the few searchers. "They are lying on the hillsides," came the reply.

Up to this time I had not met a single rebel soldier, and very few Japanese. My chief meeting with the Japanese occurred the previous day at Chong-ju. As I approached that town, I noticed that its ancient walls were broken down. The stone arches of the city gates were left, but the gates themselves and most of the walls had gone. A Japanese sentry and a gendarme stood at the gateway, and cross-examined me as I entered. A small body of Japanese troops were stationed here, and operations in the country around were apparently directed from this centre.

I at once called upon the Japanese Colonel in charge. His room, a great apartment in the local governor's yamen, showed on all sides evidences of the thoroughness with which the Japanese were conducting this campaign. Large maps, with red marks, revealed strategic positions now occupied. A little printed pamphlet, with maps, evidently for the use of officers, lay on the table.

The Colonel received me politely, but expressed his regrets that I had come. The men he was fighting were mere robbers, he said, and there was nothing for me to see. He gave me various warnings about dangers ahead. Then he very kindly explained that the Japanese plan was to hem in the volunteers, two sections of troops operating from either side and making a circle around the seat of trouble. These would unite and gradually drive the Koreans towards a centre.

The maps which the Colonel showed me settled my movements. A glance at them made clear that the Japanese had not yet occupied the line of country between Chee-chong and Won-ju. Here, then, was the place where I must go if I would meet the Korean bands. So it was towards Won-ju that I turned our horses' heads on the following day, after gazing on the ruins of Chee-chong.

It soon became evident that I was very near to the Korean forces. At one place, not far from Chee-chong, a party of them had arrived two days before I passed, and had demanded arms. A little further on Koreans and Japanese had narrowly escaped meeting in the village street, not many hours before I stopped there. As I approached one hamlet, the inhabitants fled into the high corn, and on my arrival not a soul was to be found. They mistook me for a Japanese out on a shooting and burning expedition.

It now became more difficult to obtain carriers. Our ponies were showing signs of fatigue, for we were using them very hard over the mountainous country. It was impossible to hire fresh animals, as the Japanese had commandeered all. Up to Won-ju I had to pay double the usual rate for my carriers. From Won-ju onwards carriers absolutely refused to go further, whatever the pay.

"On the road beyond here many bad men are to be found," they told me at Won-ju. "These bad men shoot every one who passes. We will not go to be shot." My own boys were showing some uneasiness. Fortunately, I had in my personal servant Min-gun, and in the leader of the pack-pony two of the staunchest Koreans I have ever known.

The country beyond Won-ju was splendidly suited for an ambuscade, such as the people there promised me. The road was rocky and broken, and largely lay through a narrow, winding valley, with overhanging cliffs. Now we would come on a splendid gorge, evidently of volcanic origin; now we would pause to chip a bit of gold-bearing quartz from the rocks, for-this is a famous gold centre of Korea. An army might have been hidden securely around.

Twilight was just gathering as we stopped at a small village where we intended remaining for the night The people were sullen and unfriendly, a striking contrast to what I had found elsewhere. In other parts they all came and welcomed me, sometimes refusing to take payment for the accommodation they supplied. "We are glad that a white man has come," But in this village the men gruffly informed me that there was not a scrap of horse food or of rice to be had. They advised us to go on to another place, fifteen li ahead.

We started out. When we had ridden a little way from the village I chanced to glance back at some trees skirting a corn-field. A man, half-hidden by a bush, was fumbling with something in his hands, something which he held down as I turned. I took it to be the handle of a small reaping-knife, but it was growing too dark to see clearly. A minute later, however, there came a smart "ping" past my ear, followed by the thud of a bullet striking metal.

I turned, but the man had disappeared. It would have been merely foolish to blaze back with a .380 Colt at a distance of over a hundred yards, and there was no time to go back. So we continued on our way.

Before arriving at Won-ju we had been told that we would certainly find the Righteous Army around there. At Won-ju men said that it was at a place fifteen or twenty miles ahead. When we reached that distance we were directed onwards to Yan-gun. We walked into Yan-gun one afternoon, only to be again disappointed. Here, however, we learned that there had been a fight that same morning at a village fifteen miles nearer Seoul, and that the Koreans had been defeated.

Yan-gun presented a remarkable sight. A dozen red crosses waved over houses at different points. In the main street every shop was closely barricaded, and a cross was pasted on nearly every door. These crosses, roughly painted on paper in red ink, were obtained from the elder of the Roman Catholic church there. A week before some Japanese soldiers had arrived and burned a few houses. They spared one house close to them waving a Christian cross. As soon as the Japanese left nearly every one pasted a cross over his door.

At first Yan-gun seemed deserted. The people were watching me from behind the shelter of their doors. Then men and boys crept out, and gradually approached. We soon made friends. The women had fled. I settled down that afternoon in the garden of a Korean house of the better type. My boy was preparing my supper in the front courtyard, when he suddenly dropped everything to rush to me. "Master," he cried, highly excited, "the Righteous Army has come. Here are the soldiers."

In another moment half a dozen of them entered the garden, formed in line in front of me and saluted. They were all lads, from eighteen to twenty-six. One, a bright-faced, handsome youth, still wore the old uniform of the regular Korean Army. Another had a pair of military trousers. Two of them were in slight, ragged Korean dress. Not one had leather boots. Around their waists were home-made cotton cartridge belts, half full. One wore a kind of tarboosh on his head, and the others had bits of rag twisted round their hair.

I looked at the guns they were carrying. The six men had five different patterns of weapons, and none was any good. One proudly carried an old Korean sporting gun of the oldest type of muzzle-loaders known to man. Around his arm was the long piece of thin rope which he kept smouldering as touch-powder, and hanging in front of him were the powder horn and bullet bag for loading. This sporting gun was, I afterwards found, a common weapon. The ramrod, for pressing down the charge, was home-made and cut from a tree. The barrel was rust-eaten. There was only a strip of cotton as a carrying strap.

The second man had an old Korean army rifle, antiquated, and a very bad specimen of its time. The third had the same. One had a tiny sporting gun, the kind of weapon, warranted harmless, that fathers give to their fond sons at the age of ten. Another had a horse-pistol, taking a rifle cartridge. Three of the guns bore Chinese marks. They were all eaten up with ancient rust.

These were the men--think of it--who for weeks had been bidding defiance to the Japanese Army! Even now a Japanese division of regular soldiers was manoeuvring to corral them and their comrades. Three of the party in front of me were coolies. The smart young soldier who stood at the right plainly acted as sergeant, and had done his best to drill his comrades into soldierly bearing. A seventh man now came in, unarmed, a Korean of the better class, well dressed in the long robes of a gentleman, but thin, sun-stained and wearied like the others.

A pitiful group they seemed--men already doomed to certain death, fighting in an absolutely hopeless cause. But as I looked the sparkling eyes and smiles of the sergeant to the right seemed to rebuke me. Pity! Maybe my pity was misplaced. At least they were showing their countrymen an example of patriotism, however mistaken their method of displaying it might be.

They had a story to tell, for they had been in the fight that morning, and had retired before the Japanese. The Japanese had the better position, and forty Japanese soldiers had attacked two hundred of them and they had given way. But they had killed four Japanese, and the Japanese had only killed two of them and wounded three more. Such was their account.

I did not ask them why, when they had killed twice as many as the enemy, they had yet retreated. The real story of the fight I could learn later. As they talked others came to join them--two old men, one fully eighty, an old tiger-hunter, with bent back, grizzled face, and patriarchal beard. The two newcomers carried the old Korean sporting rifles. Other soldiers of the retreating force were outside. There was a growing tumult in the street. How long would it be before the triumphant Japanese, following up their victory, attacked the town?

I was not to have much peace that night. In the street outside a hundred noisy disputes were proceeding between volunteers and the townsfolk. The soldiers wanted shelter; the people, fearing the Japanese, did not wish to let them in. A party of them crowded into an empty building adjoining the house where I was, and they made the place ring with their disputes and recriminations.

Very soon the officer who had been in charge of the men during the fight that day called on me. He was a comparatively young man, dressed in the ordinary long white garments of the better-class Koreans. I asked him what precautions he had taken against a night attack, for if the Japanese knew where we were they would certainly come on us. Had he any outposts placed in positions? Was the river-way guarded? "There is no need for outposts," he replied. "Every Korean man around watches for us."

I cross-examined him about the constitution of the rebel army. How were they organized? From what he told me, it was evident that they had practically no organization at all. There were a number of separate bands held together by the loosest ties. A rich man in each place found the money. This he secretly gave to one or two open rebels, and they gathered adherents around them.

He admitted that the men were in anything but a good way. "We may have to die," he said. "Well, so let it be. It is much better to die as a free man than to live as the slave of Japan."

He had not been gone long before still another called on me, a middle-aged Korean gentleman, attended by a staff of officials. Here was a man of rank, and I soon learned that he was the Commander-in-Chief for the entire district. I was in somewhat of a predicament. I had used up all my food, and had not so much as a cigar or a glass of whiskey left to offer him. One or two flickering candles in the covered courtyard of the inn lit up his care-worn face. I apologized for the rough surroundings in which I received him, but he immediately brushed my apologies aside. He complained bitterly of the conduct of his subordinate, who had risked an engagement that morning when he had orders not to. The commander, it appeared, had been called back home for a day on some family affairs, and hurried back to the front as soon as he knew of the trouble. He had come to me for a purpose. "Our men want weapons," he said. "They are as brave as can be, but you know what their guns are like, and we have very little ammunition. We cannot buy, but you can go to and fro freely as you want. Now, you act as our agent. Buy guns for us and bring them to us. Ask what money you like, it does not matter. Five thousand dollars, ten thousand dollars, they are yours if you will have them. Only bring us guns!"

I had, of course, to tell him that I could not do anything of the kind. When he further asked me questions about the positions of the Japanese I was forced to give evasive answers. To my mind, the publicist who visits fighting forces in search of information, as I was doing, is in honour bound not to communicate what he learns to the other side. I could no more tell the rebel leader of the exposed Japanese outposts I knew, and against which I could have sent his troops with the certainty of success, than I could on return tell the Japanese the strength of his forces.